A great book of sports and reflection.
Last Night When I Was Young saw me riding thoroughbred racehorses as if I were Doug Smith and Fred Winter. In the same vein, I played football as Jimmy Greaves did for Chelsea and I was a Test Match batsman emulating the great PBH May. I hit the biggest serve as Mike Sangster in the Davis Cup, as well as bobbing and weaving in the boxing ring exactly like my favourite Dick Tiger, the world middleweight champion.
I was unstoppable behind the wheel of a racing car as Britain's first world champion Mike Hawthorn but on the speedway track I rode with stylish aplomb interpreting my hero, Ronnie "Mirac" Moore. Swinging a mashie niblick as Peter Alliss was no handicap. Rugby Union at Twickenham when my body swerve was very sharp - Richard Sharp. When the Olympics came around, I ran the race of my life both over long distances and over one lap hurdles respectively as Gordon Pirie and the great David Hemery. With eyes open, I loved watching the upright Dorothy Hyman dip and throw herself over the line whilst I fell in love with Mary Rand hitch-kicking her way into Olympic history.
Fantasy is then mixed with fact. The jockeys' journeys from completing exacting apprenticeships to becoming champions on the Flat and the National Hunt. Smith riding two-year-olds on the edge in the One Thousand Guineas and the Two Thousand Guineas. Whereas Winter was jumping off the edge of the world in The Grand National.
The trials and tribulations with the relative success of the 1960's Chelsea football team from Drake's ducklings morphing into Docherty's uncut diamonds. A fourteen-year-old boy from New Zealand leaves home to become the first speedway superstar. The fight of the week from the USA brings us a Nigerian boxer who confounds convention and fights his way to the top of two weight divisions.